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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-11-06 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Mental Health Services

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:17): I rise today to speak about the important issue of mental health services in South Australia, particularly in terms of the transition to the NDIS and the horrible news we heard yesterday regarding Anglicare's announcement that they are retrenching 43 of their very highly trained and very highly valued workers, both in terms of disability workers and, particularly, mental health workers, whom I will speak about today.

I pay tribute to those mental health workers for their hard work in our community looking after people in their homes, helping them to manage their mental health conditions and their everyday life and, in particular, trying to prevent their conditions from getting worse and preventing any unnecessary admissions to our hospitals or acute mental health system. In thanking them for their work, I note my sadness at what happened yesterday in terms of their retrenchments and redundancies. What a tremendous loss this will be not only for the people of South Australia but also, in particular, for the hundreds of clients they look after.

Sadly, this is not something that has just happened. This is an issue that has been brewing and predicted for some time. Months ago, we knew that in the transition to the NDIS the federal government were cutting a whole range of their programs that they provide block funding for to partners such as Anglicare to provide support for people with mental health conditions and, in particular, the Personal Helpers and Mentors Program, which has been around for many years and which provides assistance for people outside the acute system, which keeps people healthy and in the community. Those mental health workers provide that vital role.

Months ago, we knew that this was going to be the eventual result because, sadly, that funding is being cut in South Australia. That is why the now Leader of the Opposition, when he was the health minister, made a commitment before the election that if we were returned to government we would bring in a mental health services guarantee because we think it is vitally important that, in the transition to the National Disability Insurance Scheme, people who are reliant upon services in the community and who are unable to transition to the NDIS should continue to receive support programs in the community.

Sadly, that is not something that the government have seen fit to take up. Sadly, they have not seen the benefit in trying to provide for the gap in services that we are seeing. The inevitable result is that these services are being cut. Also, we have not seen the government use any of their leverage. Supposedly, they have a special relationship with the federal government in Canberra. We have not seen them use any of that leverage in terms of pressuring the federal government to reverse these cuts and make sure that these services continue.

We also have not seen any steps from them to do what the Mental Health Coalition and others have been calling for to make sure that interim funding is provided by the state so that these services continue into the future and we do not have people missing out, as is now going to happen to so many of Anglicare's clients and people suffering from mental health conditions. They are going to lose that vital support. We know that when they lose that vital support in the community it will only increase pressure on our emergency departments, which we know from today, in fact, are the busiest and most overwhelmed that they have ever been in South Australia. Having more pressure on them from people who cannot get that community care is only going to make the situation worse.

We had a round table earlier this year, when this was first reported, with the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow minister for human services, the member for Hurtle Vale, to speak with the providers, consumers and workers about how this needs to be addressed. Sadly, we have seen no action from the government on this. What we have seen is that the number of people with mental health conditions getting access to the NDIS is very low compared with what was expected. It was expected that it would be somewhere around 80 per cent. Sadly, only 20 per cent of people are getting access, and the 60 per cent are falling through the gaps and having their services cut.

I think it is fantastic that we now have a Social Development Committee inquiry into this and the issues for people with mental health conditions getting access to the NDIS. I think the committee will come up with some good solutions, but it is not enough for the government just to wait for that. We need them to act now, and we also need them to guarantee their own services that are due to expire in June next year. All those contracts are due to expire, and we think that they need to take action now to secure these important services for South Australians.

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